The interaction of an unsteady wake with a solid body can induce sizable loading of the structure, which has many detrimental side effects in both the structural and acoustic senses. These interactions are ubiquitous in nature and engineering. A flow control technique is sought to mitigate this interaction, thereby decreasing the level of structural vibration. This thesis investigates the effectiveness of steady leading-edge blowing (LEB) flow control for modifying the vortex induced vibrations on an airfoil in the wake of a circular cylinder. The airfoil was allowed to oscillate perpendicular to the fluid flow direction in response to the impinging Von-Karman vortex street. The flow field and airfoil vibrations were simultaneously captured using Digital Particle Image Velocimetry (DPIV) and accelerometer measurements in a time-resolved sense. The results indicate that LEB can significantly reduce the degree of unsteady loading due to the blade vortex interaction (BVI). In some cases, the LEB jet appears to break the coherency of a vortex incident on the airfoil, and in other cases the jet increase the mean stand-off distance of the vortex as it convects over the airfoil surface. It was also found that, for large circular cylinders, if the airfoil is within the mean closure point of the circular cylinder wake, the LEB can increase the level of BVI. The Proper Orthogonal Decomposition (POD) was also used to analyze the DPIV data. POD is mathematically superior for reducing a data rich field into fundamental modes; a suitable basis function for the reduction is chosen mathematically and it is not left to the researcher to pick the basis function. A comparison of the energy in these modes is useful in ascertaining the dynamics of the BVI. For one of the two cases examined with POD, it was found for no LEB the fundamental (i.e. most energetic) mode is given by the vortex shedding of the circular cylinder upstream. The addition of LEB reduces the energy contained in this fundamental mode. Thus the LEB jet has the effect of reducing the flow field coherency; the structure of the large vortices is broken up into smaller vortices. For the other case, the LEB jet has the opposite effect: the jet has the ability to organize the circular cylinder wake into coherent structures. This acts to increase the coherency of the circular cylinder wake and increases the level of BVI. / Master of Science

Este trabalho representa o início de uma série de pesquisas que visam o estudo da turbulência e de sua relação com processos de mistura e trocas gasosas entre ar e água, através de experimentos com grades oscilantes. Seu objetivo foi o projeto e a construção de um tanque de grade oscilante, equipamento que gera turbulência com intensidade controlável. Após a construção do tanque, experimentos para medições de velocidade turbulenta foram feitos, com uso de uma técnica de velocimetria a laser. Uma grade de 9x9 barras foi usada na agitação do fluido, com uma amplitude de oscilação de 3 cm, para 4 diferentes freqüências de oscilação. Adquiriu-se 9600 imagens do movimento do fluido, em 6 regiões do tanque, para a obtenção dos campos de velocidade turbulenta, calculados através do software Visiflow e de um programa computacional desenvolvido neste trabalho. Os gráficos criados a partir dos campos possibilitaram a observação do decaimento espacial da turbulência e da região de sua produção. Os campos médios de velocidade mostraram-se bem inferiores aos campos instantâneos, indicando a existência de baixo escoamento médio do fluido. As condições de isotropia e a homogeneidade espacial da turbulência são mais aproximadas à medida que se afasta da grade. A intensidade turbulenta produzida é diretamente relacionada com a freqüência de oscilação. O número de imagens para a obtenção de uma média representativa da velocidade turbulenta neste equipamento parece ser dependente da freqüência de oscilação da grade. Isto aponta para a necessidade de estabelecer corretamente as condições para os cálculos estatísticos em escoamentos turbulentos / This work presents the project and construction of a tank with an oscillating grid, equipment which provides for the experimental studies of turbulence and its relation to mixing processes and gas transfer across fluid interface. Experiments were carried out with the use of digital particle image velocimetry technique, to investigate the properties of the produced turbulence. A grid made of 9x9 square bars was used to stir the water, with a stroke of 3 cm and 4 different oscillation frequencies. A number of 9600 images were acquired, in 6 regions of the tank, for the generation of the turbulent velocity fields through the software Visiflow and a computational program developed in this work. The results showed that the current equipment, with a new concept for the grid oscillation system, can be conveniently useful for studies in this research field. Average velocity fields appeared to be considerably smaller than the instantaneous velocity fields, which leads to the existence of nearly-stationary turbulence in the water volume. Nearly-isotropic turbulence and spatial homogeneity were approximate as the measurements distanced from the grid. The turbulent intensity was directly dependent on the oscillation frequency. The spatial decay of the turbulence and the region near the grid where it is produced could also be observed. The number of images necessary for the calculus of reliable root-mean-square turbulent velocities seems to be dependent on the oscillation frequency of the grid. It results in the necessity of establishing correct statistical analysis of turbulent flows

Este trabalho representa o início de uma série de pesquisas que visam o estudo da turbulência e de sua relação com processos de mistura e trocas gasosas entre ar e água, através de experimentos com grades oscilantes. Seu objetivo foi o projeto e a construção de um tanque de grade oscilante, equipamento que gera turbulência com intensidade controlável. Após a construção do tanque, experimentos para medições de velocidade turbulenta foram feitos, com uso de uma técnica de velocimetria a laser. Uma grade de 9x9 barras foi usada na agitação do fluido, com uma amplitude de oscilação de 3 cm, para 4 diferentes freqüências de oscilação. Adquiriu-se 9600 imagens do movimento do fluido, em 6 regiões do tanque, para a obtenção dos campos de velocidade turbulenta, calculados através do software Visiflow e de um programa computacional desenvolvido neste trabalho. Os gráficos criados a partir dos campos possibilitaram a observação do decaimento espacial da turbulência e da região de sua produção. Os campos médios de velocidade mostraram-se bem inferiores aos campos instantâneos, indicando a existência de baixo escoamento médio do fluido. As condições de isotropia e a homogeneidade espacial da turbulência são mais aproximadas à medida que se afasta da grade. A intensidade turbulenta produzida é diretamente relacionada com a freqüência de oscilação. O número de imagens para a obtenção de uma média representativa da velocidade turbulenta neste equipamento parece ser dependente da freqüência de oscilação da grade. Isto aponta para a necessidade de estabelecer corretamente as condições para os cálculos estatísticos em escoamentos turbulentos / This work presents the project and construction of a tank with an oscillating grid, equipment which provides for the experimental studies of turbulence and its relation to mixing processes and gas transfer across fluid interface. Experiments were carried out with the use of digital particle image velocimetry technique, to investigate the properties of the produced turbulence. A grid made of 9x9 square bars was used to stir the water, with a stroke of 3 cm and 4 different oscillation frequencies. A number of 9600 images were acquired, in 6 regions of the tank, for the generation of the turbulent velocity fields through the software Visiflow and a computational program developed in this work. The results showed that the current equipment, with a new concept for the grid oscillation system, can be conveniently useful for studies in this research field. Average velocity fields appeared to be considerably smaller than the instantaneous velocity fields, which leads to the existence of nearly-stationary turbulence in the water volume. Nearly-isotropic turbulence and spatial homogeneity were approximate as the measurements distanced from the grid. The turbulent intensity was directly dependent on the oscillation frequency. The spatial decay of the turbulence and the region near the grid where it is produced could also be observed. The number of images necessary for the calculus of reliable root-mean-square turbulent velocities seems to be dependent on the oscillation frequency of the grid. It results in the necessity of establishing correct statistical analysis of turbulent flows

A unique, super spatio-temporal resolution Digital Particle Image Velocimetry (DPIV) system with capability of resolving velocities in a multi-phase flow field, using a very sophisticated novel Dynamically Adaptive Hybrid velocity evaluation algorithm has been developed The unique methodology of this powerful system is presented, its specific distinctions are enlightened, confirming its flexibility, and its superior performance is established by comparing it to the most established best DPIV software implementations currently available. Taking advantage of the most recent advances in imaging technology coupled with state of the art image processing tools, high-performing validation schemes including neural networks, as well as a hybrid digital particle tracking velocimeter (DPTV), the foundation for a unique system was developed. The presented software enables one to effectively resolve tremendously demanding flow-fields. The resolution of challenging test cases including high speed cavitating underwater projectiles as well as high pressure spray demonstrate the power of the developed device. / Master of Science

Chrysopelea paradisi, also known as the flying snake, possesses one of the most unique forms of aerial locomotion found in nature, using its entire body as a dynamic lifting surface without the use of wings or membranes. Unlike other airborne creatures, this species lacks appendages to aid in controlling its flight trajectory and producing lift. The snake exhibits exception gliding and maneuvering capabilities compared with other species of gliders despite this lack of appendages. While gliding, C. paradisi morphs its body by expanding its ribs, essentially doubling its width and utilizing its entire length as a reconfigurable wing. Its cross-sectional shape transforms into a thick, airfoil shape with a concave ventral surface, outwards protruding lips at the leading and trailing edges, a somewhat triangular dorsal surface with a round apex, and fore-aft symmetry. This study investigated the aerodynamic performance of this unique shape by simulating a single, static segment of the snake's body over a wide range of Reynolds numbers (3,000 to 15,000) and angles of attack (-10 to 60o) to simulate the full range of the snake's flight kinematics. This is the first study on an anatomically accurate snake model, and few aerodynamic studies have been performed in this low Reynolds number regime. Load cell measurements and time-resolved digital particle image velocimetry (TRDPIV) were performed on a 2D anatomically accurate model to determine the lift and drag coefficients, wake dynamics, and vortex shedding characteristics. This geometry produced a maximum lift coefficient of 1.9 and maximum lift to drag ratio of 2.7, and maintained increases in lift up to 35o. Overall, this geometry demonstrated robust aerodynamic behavior by maintain significant lift production and near maximum lift to drag ratios over a wide range of test parameters. These aerodynamic characteristics may enable the flying snake to glide at steep angles and over a wide range of angles of attack, often encountered in gliding trajectories. This geometry also produced larger maximum lift coefficients than many other bluff bodies and airfoils in this low Reynolds number regime. This thesis is organized as follows. The first section contains a broad introduction on gliding flight and C. paradisi's unique mode of gliding. The following section is a manuscript that will be submitted to a journal and contains the experimental analysis on the snake's cross-sectional shape. Several appendices attached to the end of this thesis contain additional analysis and work performed throughout the duration of this project and unique Matlab algorithms developed during this research. / Master of Science

Thermoacoustic instabilities in modern high-performance, low-emission gas turbine engines are often observable as large amplitude pressure oscillations and can result in serious performance and structural degradations. These acoustic oscillations can cause oscillations in combustor through-flows and given the right phase conditions, can also drive unsteady heat release. This coupling has the potential to enhance the amplitude of pressure oscillations. To curb the potential harms caused by the existence of thermoacoustic instabilities, recent efforts have focused on the active suppression and even complete control of these instabilities. Intuitively, development of effective active combustion control methodologies is strongly dependent on the knowledge of the onset and sustenance of thermoacoustic instabilities. Specially, non-premixed spray combustion environment pose additional challenges due to the inherent unstable dynamics of sprays. The understanding of the manner in which the combustor acoustics affect the spray characteristics, which in turn result in heat release oscillation, is therefore, of paramount importance. The experimental investigations and the modeling studies conducted towards achieving this knowledge have been presented in this dissertation. Experimental efforts comprise both reacting and non-reacting flow studies. Reacting flow experiments were conducted on a overall lean direct injection, swirl-stabilized combustor rig. The investigations spanned combustor characterization and stability mapping over the operating regime. All experiments were performed under atmospheric pressure condition, which is considered as an obvious first step towards providing valuable insights into more intense processes in actual gas turbine combustors. The onset of thermoacoustic instability and the transition of the combustor to two unstable regimes were investigated via phase-locked chemiluminescence imaging and measurement and phase-locked acoustic characterization. It was found that the onset of the thermoacoustic instability is a function of the energy gain of the system, while the sustenance of instability is due to the in-phase relationship between combustor acoustics and unsteady heat release driven by acoustic oscillations. The presence of non-linearities in the system between combustor acoustic and heat release and also between combustor acoustics and air through-flow were found to exist. The impact of high amplitude limit-cycle pressure on droplet breakdown under very low mean airflow and the localized effects of forced primary fuel modulations on heat release were also investigated. The non-reacting flow experiments were conducted to study the spray behavior under the presence of an acoustic field. An isothermal acoustic rig was specially fabricated, where the pressure oscillations were generated using an acoustic driver. Phase Doppler Anemometry was used to measure the droplet velocities and sizes under varying acoustic forcing conditions and spray feed pressures. Measurements made at different locations in the spray were related to these variations in mean and unsteady inputs. The droplet velocities were found to show a second order response to acoustic forcing with the cut-off frequency equal to the relaxation time corresponding to mean droplet size. It was also found that under acoustic forcing the droplets migrate radially away from the spray centerline and show oscillatory excursions in their movement. Non-reacting flow experiments were also performed using Time-Resolved Digital Particle Image Velocimetry to characterize modulated sprays. Frequency response of droplet diameters were analyzed in the pulsed spray. These pilot experiments were conducted to assess the capability of the system to measure dynamic data. Modeling efforts were undertaken to gain physical insights of spray dynamics under the influence of acoustic forcing and to explain the experimental findings. The radial migration of droplets and their oscillatory movement were validated. The flame characteristics in the two unstable regimes and the transition between them were explained. It was found that under certain acoustic and mean air-flow condition, bands of high droplet densities were formed which resulted in diffusion type group burning of droplets. It was also shown that very high acoustic amplitudes cause secondary breakup of droplets. / Ph. D.

A series of laboratory experiments were conducted at three fetches of 4.8, 8.8 and 12.4 m, and at six wind speeds ranging from 4.1 to 9.6 m/s at each fetch in a wind-wave-current research facility. In addition, five surfactant-influenced experiments were conducted at concentrations ranging from 0.1 to 5.0 ppm at a wind speed of 7.9 m/s and a fetch of 4.8 m. The goals were to examine the momentum transfer and to characterize the turbulent flow structure beneath wind waves, and to investigate the relationship between wind waves and the gas transfer rate at the air-water interface. Digital particle image velocimetry (DPIV) was used to measure two-dimensional instantaneous velocity fields beneath the wind waves. The friction velocities and roughness lengths of the coupled boundary layers were used to characterize the flow regime and momentum transfer. The air-side flows were found to be aerodynamically rough and the water-side flows were found to be in transition and then become hydrodynamically smooth as wind speed increased. Airflow separation from the crests of breaking waves may be responsible for making the air-side boundary layer rougher and water-side boundary layer smoother. Momentum transfer was studied by examining the partitioning of the wind stress into the viscous tangential stress and wave-induced stress. It was found that the wave steepness was the most important wind-wave property that controls the momentum transfer in the coupled boundary layers. Two distinct layers were observed in the near-surface turbulence in the presence of a surfactant and three layers in clean water. In the surfactant-influenced experiments, the energy dissipation rate decayed as zeta^(-0.3) in the upper layer and in the lower layer energy dissipation rate decayed as zeta^(-1.0) similar to a wall-layer. For clean experiments, the energy dissipation rate could be scaled using the depth, friction velocity, wave height and phase speed as proposed by Terray et al. (1996) provided that layer based friction velocities were used. In the upper layer, the near-surface turbulence was dominated by wave-induced motions and the dissipation rates decayed as zeta^(-0.2) at all fetches. Below this in the transition layer turbulence was generated by both wave-induced motions and shear currents and the dissipation rate decayed as zeta^(-2.0) at a fetch of 4.8 m. However, at fetches of 8.8 and 12.4 m, the dissipation rate decayed at two different rates; as zeta^(-2.0) in the upper region and as zeta^(-4.0) in the lower region. In the third layer, the dissipation rate decayed as zeta^(-1.0) similar to a wall-layer at a fetch of 4.8 m. Four empirical relationships commonly used to predict the gas transfer rate were evaluated using laboratory measurements. The gas transfer rate was found to correlate most closely with the total mean square wave slope and varied linearly with this parameter. The three other parameterizations using wind speed, wind friction velocity and energy dissipation did not correlate as well. / Water Resources Engineering

No description available.

Cardiovascular diseases are among the leading causes of deaths worldwide, but the fluid mechanics of many of these conditions and the devices used to treat them are only partially understood. This goal of this dissertation was to develop new experimental techniques that would enable translational research into two of these conditions. The first set of experiments examined <i>in-vitro</i> the changes in Wall Shear Stress (WSS) and Oscillatory Shear Index (OSI) caused by the implantation of coronary stents into the arteries of the heart using Particle Image Velocimetry. These experiments featured one-to-one scaling, commercial stents, and realistic flow and pressure waveforms, and are believed to be the most physiologically accurate stent experiments to date. This work revealed distinct differences in WSS and OSI between the different stent designs tested, and showed that changes in implantation configuration also affected these hemodynamic parameters. Also, the production of vortices near the stent struts during flow reversal was noted, and an inverse correlation between WSS and OSI was described. The second set of experiments investigated Left Ventricular Diastolic Dysfunction (LVDD) using phase contrast magnetic resonance imaging (pcMRI). Using this technique, ten patients with and without LVDD were scanned and a 2D portrait of blood flow through their heart was obtained. To augment this data, pressure fields were calculated from the velocity data using an omni-directional pressure integration scheme coupled with a proper-orthogonal decomposition-based smoothing. This technique was selected from a variety of methods from the literature based on an extensive error analysis and comparison. With this coupled information, it was observed that healthy patients exhibited different flow patterns than diseased patients, and had stronger pressure differences during early filling. In particular, the ratio of early filling pressure to late filling pressure was a statistically significant predictor of diastolic dysfunction. Based on these observations, a novel hypothesis was presented that related the motion of the heart walls to the observed flow patterns and pressure gradients, which may explain the differences observed clinically between healthy and diseased patients. / Ph. D.

Digital Particle Image Velocimetry (DPIV) is a planar measurement technique to measure the velocity within a fluid by correlating the motion of flow tracers over a sequence of images recorded with a camera-laser system. Sophisticated digital processing algorithms are required to provide a high enough accuracy for quantitative DPIV results. This study explores the potential of a variety of cross-correlation filters to improve the accuracy and robustness of the DPIV estimation. These techniques incorporate the use of the Phase Transform (PHAT) Generalized Cross Correlation (GCC) filter applied to the image cross-correlation. The use of spatial windowing is subsequently examined and shown to be ideally suited for the use of phase correlation estimators, due to their invariance to the loss of correlation effects. The Robust Phase Correlation (RPC) estimator is introduced, with the coupled use of the phase correlation and spatial windowing. The RPC estimator additionally incorporates the use of a spectral filter designed from an analytical decomposition of the DPIV Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR). This estimator is validated in a variety of artificial image simulations, the JPIV standard image project, and experimental images, which indicate reductions in error on the order of 50% when correlating low SNR images. Two variations of the RPC estimator are also introduced, the Gaussian Transformed Phase Correlation (GTPC): designed to optimize the subpixel interpolation, and the Spectral Phase Correlation (SPC): estimates the image shift directly from the phase content of the correlation. While these estimators are designed for DPIV, the methodology described here provides a universal framework for digital signal correlation analysis, which could be extended to a variety of other systems. / Master of Science